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Ann Herendeen has written the book she always
wanted to read: the bisexual historical
romance Phyllida and the Brotherhood
of Philander. "Phyllida" is the story
of a spirited and curvaceous but penniless
woman who agrees to a marriage of convenience
with Andrew Carrington: an arrogant yet
magnetic gentleman poised to inherit an
earldom. Carrington is gay, but in need
of an heir to insure the continuity of his
family line. Phyllida agrees to his conditions:
that he can continue his "active membership"
in the Brotherhood of Philander, an exclusive,
secret club for gentlemen who prefer their
own sex, as long as she can continue her
writing. As the two proceed to "do their
duty" for the family line, Carrington's
dormant bisexuality is awakened and the
two, surprisingly, begin to fall in love.
When he meets the handsome Matthew Thornby,
son of a self-made baronet, Andrew seems
to have everything a man could desire. But
the fragile understanding developing between
the future Earl and his bride is shattered
when a member of their own household turns
spy and blackmailer, causing a rift between
husband and wife and threatening to expose
Carrington and the entire "Brotherhood."
Will Phyllida and her husband reconcile?
Will they be able to stop the villainous
plot? Or will Carrington and the "Brotherhood"
be pilloried and jailed for the crime of
being "men who enjoy other men?"
Ann Herendeen is a native
New Yorker and lifelong resident of Brooklyn
who at 51 has published her first novel.
She is a slender, attractive woman with
long auburn hair and an air of fragility
who punctuates her sentences with emphatic
gestures: drawing attention to her unique
hands. Ironically, for a writer, she lacks
differentiated or working fingers, for the
most part, as her hands didn't form in the
normal way. Her creativity, however, hasn't
been hampered at all, and her book is swiftly
making the rounds of the bisexual community.
I sat down with Ann recently to learn more
about her intriguing novel and the intriguing
author herself.
*****
Q:
This is your first book. Did the idea to
write a novel come like a bolt out of the
blue or had you always harbored a desire
to be a writer?
A:
I tried once, shortly after graduation from
college in 1977, to write a lesbian historical
romance. Back then, the only writing tool
was the typewriter. Change something on
page one and everything has to be retyped.
I got to page three or four before deciding
-- this is impossible. I didn't do any more
writing until I got a PC in the '90's. Since
then, I've been writing steadily but this
is the first novel I've tried to publish.
Q:
What made you want to write a bisexual romance
novel?
A:
My writing, like my favorite reading, is
all about escapism. When I started writing,
my goal was to make my fantasy "real" by
writing a novel that was exactly the kind
of thing I wanted to read but couldn't find.
In my earlier writing, I was working in
the sword-and-sorcery subgenre of sci-fi,
but I was focusing much more on my fantasy
of the perfect marriage, which requires
a bisexual husband, than on any science
or sword-fighting. So a bisexual romance
novel seemed more like the right genre for
writing about a man with a wife and a boyfriend.
Especially because my writing "voice" was
moving in the direction of comedy, which
is better suited to the romance genre, I
think, than sword-and-sorcery.
Q:
You call this a bisexual regency romance.
For those of us not so familiar with the
genre ... what is a regency romance?
A:
A Regency romance is a historical romance
that takes place during the English Regency,
1811-1820, when the future King George IV
acted as the regent for his father King
George III, who was too sick to govern.
The Regency romance, as a genre, was pretty
much invented in the 1930s and 1940s by
Georgette Heyer, and the Regency period
has become a hugely popular setting for
historical romance. Regencies are typically
light, witty comedies of manners, focusing
on the leisured upper classes. The first
ones had no sex in them and usually ended
with a kiss and a marriage proposal. Modern
authors tend to write plenty of steamy sex
scenes in most romance novels, Regency and
others, because most readers want that.
Q:
In the novel, Andrew Carrington belongs
to a very exclusive club. What is a "molly
house" and did they really exist? Were they
all the same or were there different kinds?
A:
There really were molly houses. They existed
primarily during the 18th century, and they
were like a combination of gay bar and bathhouse
without the baths -- no running water in
those days. "Molly" was a slang term for
gay man then. It's a diminutive of the name
Mary, one of several examples of gay terms
from 200 years ago that are still in use
today. In a molly house, gay men drank,
danced and had sex together. There were
upstairs rooms, often without doors, for
having sex. There were even "molly weddings."
There's no way to know if these were just
fun and games, gay men making fun of the
rituals of straight society, or genuine
same-sex commitment ceremonies. My guess
is, probably some of both. All we know of
molly houses, and the gay subculture in
general, comes from court cases, the transcripts
of the trials of men arrested in raids and
prosecuted for "sodomy" or "attempted sodomy."
The evidence against them came from informers,
men who hung out in molly houses, pretending
to be participants, then reported to the
authorities when they had enough juicy details
to tell.
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As
to my hero, Andrew Carrington: Like most
historical romances, "Phyllida" is set among
the upper classes. There's no information
whatsoever about the kind of clubs, if any,
that upper-class gay men belonged to. The
men who went to molly houses were primarily
middle- and working-class. So my fictional
device was to imagine a club that very wealthy
gay men could create for themselves, with
excellent security -- big, tough bouncers
who could read the names on calling cards,
who would absolutely never let in an unknown
person off the street. "What we lose in
variety we gain in security," Andrew explains.
I could write anything I wanted for this
fictional club because of circular logic:
the members of The Brotherhood of Philander
are so wealthy they can effectively protect
their club from raids. Because it was never
raided, there are no court cases in the
records, so we don't know anything about
it. For the humor of the contrast, I made
the club seem kind of stuffy ... the stereotype
of the later-19th-century-style English
gentlemen's club. Leather sofas and wing
chairs, men reading the paper, drinking
whisky, playing cards, not talking much,
and usually in the clipped, upper-class
style when they do -- but also playing strip-whist
and going upstairs for sex, just like in
a molly house.
Q:
What intrigued you about the historical
period of the novel and how did you research
it?
A:
It was reading the Regency romances of Georgette
Heyer that sparked my interest in that period.
I liked the background of the Napoleonic
Wars, the style of dress and speech, the
Romantic poetry, and particularly the mood
of the time, still rational and coarse Georgian
18th century in outlook, but moving in the
direction of the proper and sentimental
Victorian later in the 19th century. In
terms of writing a bisexual romance, I found
it intriguing how, as in the previous century,
the way in which "gentlemen" spoke and interacted
with each other was so different from the
way they behaved and spoke with "ladies."
I hate research, which
is one of the main reasons I chose this
period -- I didn't have to do any. Reading
Heyer's Regency romances got me curious.
She made it seem so "romantic" in a witty,
1920s way, that I wanted to know if it really
was like that, what was true, what was fiction.
Over the years I read some actual history
and biography of the period, enough to feel
comfortable writing a novel set in this
time. I did do some research on the gay
subculture, specifically, reading Rictor
Norton's book Mother Clap's Molly House:
The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830.
Q:
Phyllida (the main character) is a writer.
She has a favorite ink-stained and tattered
robe she likes to wear while writing. Do
you have a favorite writing garment?
A:
Yes. It's not ink-stained because I use
a computer, and it's not quite so tattered,
but it is old and grubby. It's an old robe
I put on over my nightgown. In the summer
I wear a minuscule black spaghetti-strap
chemise. I'd prefer to be naked, but I like
to sit by the open window. Physical comfort
is essential for writing. I don't want to
be distracted by tight waistbands, undergarments
-- anything that I can feel on me or that
I have to worry about keeping clean takes
my mind off the story. But don't get too
grossed out -- I do wash these garments
along with my regular laundry!
Q:
In the story, there is a wager on whether
Carrington, who has a reputation as "a man
for men," will be able to impregnate his
bride (Phyllida) by the end of the season.
The wager is entered into the "betting book"
at White's, a local pub. It seems as though
the entire town has money riding on the
outcome. Was this just a humorous device
for the story or a common practice of the
time?
A:
There actually was an exclusive gambling
club -- not a pub -- called White's and
it really had a betting book to write down
the wagers. Gambling and betting on almost
anything was -- and is -- a huge part of
British culture. Men with enormous incomes
and plenty of free time bet high stakes
on card games and dice, but also wagered
on everything from politics to which of
two flies would crawl first up the window.
My one real fictional device in this part
of the story was extending the circle of
wagerers far beyond the select few members
of White's to include wives, mistresses,
boyfriends, etc. I figured that this wager
would be so interesting that everyone would
want to get in on the action, and would
manage, through some sixth degree of separation,
to find a member of the club who could place
the bet under his own name.
Q:
Andrew Carrington marries Phyllida because
of family pressure to sire an heir. He plans
to continue leading a gay life, having relations
with his wife solely for the purposes of
procreation. After all, in those days there
were no fertility clinics! However, in the
process of trying to impregnate his wife
he begins to enjoy their sexual encounters
and ultimately falls in love. Have you ever
had the desire to seduce a gay man?
A:
Oh, god, don't get me started. The one person
I was truly in love with was a gay guy.
Can't be more specific, in case he reads
this. My big worry writing this fantasy
is that people will think I have some big
agenda to "change" a gay man, or gay men
in general. But if I were lucky enough to
seduce a gay man, the whole point of that
for me is for him to continue with his same-sex
activity. There's no point in "changing"
him away from what it is that turns me on
in the first place. What I like is bisexual
men who are primarily same-sex oriented,
with occasional forays into man-woman sex.
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